{% include "includes/auth/janrain/signIn_traditional.html" with message='It looks like you are already verified. If you still have trouble signing in, you probably need a new confirmation link email.' %}

Collective Soul’s Ed Roland brings the ‘Sweet’ to Bamboo Room

After 20 years as the lead singer of Collective Soul and hits like “Shine,” “The World I Know” and “December,” and with his first break in touring in almost three years, Ed Roland decided to do the logical thing.

“We were exhausted, so it was time for everyone to go home, make sure their family still liked them, to be a dad,” he explained.

And after some quality time at home in Atlanta, Roland’s hitting the road again. Briefly.

“We figured that it was a good time to say ‘If someone wants to do something, that’s cool,” he explains about the Sweet Tea Project, his side band comprised of several old friends singing new music – and a Collective Soul favorite or two – in some selected Florida venues, including Lake Worth’s Bamboo Room.
“I reconnected with some old friends of mine, who play the coffee house circuit and we went to the studio in my home and wrote till midnight, 1 o’clock in the morning,” he continues. “They weren’t Collective Soul songs, but they took off from there and started having fun with it. It’s really the instrumentation (that’s different). We picked up the ukelele, and the banjo and started having fun.”

The songs on “Devils N Darlins,” the Sweet Tea Project’s new album, were actually recorded a year ago, but Roland had Collective Soul commitments to fulfill. The finished project is a diverse collection of rollicking tunes distinguished by Roland’s raspy voice and a variety of rootsy instruments. The title track, for instance, sounds like a nouveau Tom Petty song.

“Well, that’s all I needed to hear! We can end this interview right now!” Roland jokes. “That’s the best thing I’ve heard!”

Keeping the band’s live appearances regional for the moment is part of a deliberate plan to get some exposure while rolling the record out gradually.

“I don’t want a lot of people to say ‘It’s the guy from Collective Soul’ and expecting to hear Collective Soul songs and be disappointed,” he says. “I want to play at just the right spots, and give the people just enough. The other night we were just jamming, and I broke out ‘The World I Know’ and all of a sudden there was a banjo in it. I was like ‘That’s different! Didn’t see that one coming!'”

Roland says that it’s not surprising that Florida is one of those right places to introduce the world to the Sweet Tea Project. He says that Collective Soul “spent a lot of time in Orlando, where we broke, and we recorded in Miami. Florida was our state! South Florida isn’t a bad place to be in the winter. We actually went to upstate New York one winter to look at a studio, and it was a really nice studio. Then we walked outside and looked at each other and said ‘Nope! We’re going back to Florida.'”